


Qui mortem invitavis

by Ruyi



Series: touken ranbu prompts [16]
Category: Final Fantasy VII, 刀剣乱舞 | Touken Ranbu
Genre: #tkrb_69min, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 15:45:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16178177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruyi/pseuds/Ruyi
Summary: You, who invite death. Originally written for a tumblr prompt, but now doing double duty for #tkrb_69min theme "Trust vs. Betrayal."





	Qui mortem invitavis

"You can't trust anybody," Sephiroth says, and Yagen only smiles.

"Not completely, no. But you can trust them  _enough._ " He tilts his head to the side, agreeing with the silver-haired man as he stares out the door. "Just to let them in when it counts, and shut them out when it’s over. _"_

He checks his supplies one more time, making sure the troops that the General–his  _master_ , not this gloomy, pale-faced man–equipped on him are still sound, then turns back to face Sephiroth squarely.

"You’re not from this world, but I am. So if you want to get back, at least work with me first to get out of this mess."

The other chairs and tables in the restaurant begin to rattle. Yagen catches the scent of electricity crackling in the air, spots the distortions forming holes in the skies and sending more enemies landing their way. He hasn’t even finished his lunch yet, but that’s because the Retrograde Army always picks the best time to intrude.

Something lands with a heavy  _whump_  on the roof. Yagen unsheathes his tantou and straightens in his seat to peer quietly at the ceiling.

"For someone who knows their sword as well as I know mine," he adds. "This should be a piece of cake."

The timber cracks. A hulking, massive form of black and bones rips its way through the ceiling, even as Yagen leaps to his feet and Sephiroth seemingly does nothing. Seconds later, the tantou’s cut off its head while Masamune protrudes starkly through its lanky ribcage. With a soft hiss, the enemy yari fades away along with its weapon.

"Not bad," Yagen observes as he lands on his feet.

“Mere afterthought,” his companion stands up to full height and settles his blade by his waist. “Lead us.”

And Yagen’s face breaks into a grin. "Of course,  _General."_

It usually takes a full team of swords to beat back an entire army. But with Sephiroth as support, two is enough.

 _Though this time,_ Yagen thinks as he weaves between two flying  _tantou_ to strike them down in the center,  _I’m the one playing second fiddle._

In any case, there’s not a hair out of place on the SOLDIER’s head by the time they finish off all the enemies. Yagen waits for the dust to settle and Konnosuke to come bounding into his arms before facing his immaculate partner.

"Thanks."

“What is this?” Sephiroth looks highly unimpressed with the yellow furball blinking back at him.

"Our ticket home," Yagen replies simply.

 _Home_ in this case being the citadel, a large but traditional Japanese complex with sliding doors and tatami floors and an aesthetic that reminds the silver-haired man very much of Wutai. He meets with Yagen’s ‘General’ first, a slight figure covered from head to toe in ceremonial robes and known as the Saniwa. It’s impossible to make out their features or even their gender, and he finds himself very disinclined in care.

“Masamune?” the human questions him, more interested in his blade than himself. “Ah, then I’ll have Hyuuga show you around.”

And out comes a little boy with white-blond hair and light-blue eyes, who refers to him politely as a long lost brother and takes him by the hand to lead him all around the citadel before ending up in front of the guest room. 

“If you need more assistance, please call on me anytime!” the  _tantou_ finishes and presses a package into Sephiroth’s hands. He opens it up to find two  _onigiri,_ carefully wrapped in seaweed and topped with a  _umeboshi_ center.

"Settling in alright?" Moments after Hyuuga runs off ‘to help in the kitchens,’ Yagen strolls down the hall. He’s wearing his casual outfit and glasses, but no labcoat.

“I thought you were getting me  _back,”_ Sephiroth says in a low voice.

Yagen puts up two placating hands."The citadel is our base of operations, so it’s easier for the Saniwa to make arrangements here. They’ve got the Konnosukes looking into it, too."

“The what?”

"The foxes," Yagen clarifies. " _Kon kon?_ They’re more advanced than they look."

“Did you just  _kon kon_ me.”

"It’s a pun. Kon kon, Konnosuke–"

Sephiroth kindly slams the door of his room in Yagen’s face.

"Erm…you just took it off its hinges. Do you want me to…"

“Leave.”

"Alright then. Dinner’s in an hour, you’re welcome to join us if you’d like."

Sephiroth does not “join them” as Yagen suggests, but he does make his way to the dining area to get his fill of subsistence to support his current body. Most of the occupants would pale before his height, but he discovers (quite unpleasantly) that he’s dwarfed by the  _yari_ and  _naginata_ in the room.

“Ooh.” Someone bumps into him, nearly knocking the food off his tray. Sephiroth whirls back and gets a face full of  _chest._

“I didn’t notice you since you’re too small. I’m Iwatooshi, Musashibou Benkei’s  _naginata!_  Gahahahaha!“ At nearly six feet seven, Iwatooshi towers high enough to see the top of Sephiroth’s head. Higher still is the  _tantou_ perched on his shoulders who peers down to give Sephiroth’s single black wing a curious look.

“Wah~! Are you a tengu, too? Or maybe a new  _oodachi?”_

“He’s a Masamune!” someone else pipes up.

“Masamune?” Mitsutada’s head whips up at the word, only to be corrected seconds later.

“The one from Sagami, not Yamagata!”

“Ah.”

“He’s cool!”

“He’s a little scary, too…”

“So does that make him Hyuuga’s older brother?”

"He’s a  _guest,"_ Yagen speaks up at last, standing up from his seat at the Awataguchi table to weave across the room and slip in between SOLDIER and  _naginata._ "He’s also yet to eat his dinner, so let’s give him some space to  _breathe."_

The air is clearer outside so that’s where they end up sitting, with strict instructions to the other swords to leave them alone.

"You know, I would’ve brought you something if you didn’t show up." Yagen bites into an apple while Sephiroth considers his meal.

“I’ve dealt with this before.” ShinRa had canteens for its SOLDIERs, after all, and he didn’t eat  _exclusively_ in his office. “Were those…”

"The swords?" Yagen looks up. "Yeah. The General’s personal army."

“Some of them look like children.” Which wasn’t strange–he’d seen the likes training in Wutai before, but ShinRa’s elite hardly accepted anyone younger than their teens into their forces. Leaving aside the grueling training on underdeveloped muscles, they’d never survive the Mako treatments.

" _Tantou_ tend to do that," Yagen admits. "But they’re old. And they’ve killed their share on the battlefields."

“Monsters?” Sephiroth asks, thinking back to  _steel_ and  _bone_ and  _rust._ “Or humans?”

"It’s stopped mattering by now," Yagen replies. "As long as they die like they’re supposed to."

–

“Why  _don’t_ you alter the past?”

"Because it’s set." Yagen pauses from raking the leaves to rest his chin on the handle. "And we’re supposed to  _fix_ it." 

 _Because that’s what the enemy wants,_ whispers the echoes of his old and loyal heart.

“And what makes the present worth keeping?” Sephiroth challenges next. “Why not take this chance to correct the flaws of your history and make it…more complete?”

"Then the legacies and meanings will all change," Yagen replies. "And there’ll be new flaws to replace the old. Humans aren’t perfect, so their history never will be, either."

“It could be better.”

"It could be  _worse."_

It’s been three weeks. The Saniwa’s made contact with the government, who’s instructed them to keep the Outlier (so they call him) in their sights at all times while they deal with the irregularity. Deployment permissions were requested a week after that and granted with surveillance requirements at all times. Being the one who found him first, it’s Yagen that spends the most time with their newest visitor.

“You won’t consider other possibilities.”

"That’s not part of my duties," Yagen catches more stray leaves and adds them to his pile. "I only serve the General and take their word as law."

“They haven’t been your only master.”

"No, but they’re the one who commands me now. That’s good enough."

Maybe he forgets, that Sephiroth was once a General himself.

Maybe he forgets, that they have both tasted enough of fires and war to know how to shift its tides.

Maybe he forgets, that to have one wing is sometimes worse than having no wings at all, with the promise of flight before you yet never within you, a single chance  _short_ of getting what you wanted, what you dreamed.

_What you think you deserve._

And for a man who once held an entire Planet in his thrall, grasping the timeline in his hands is as simple as picking up a piece of string and pulling until it  _snaps._

–

_"Sephiroth!"_

It’s not the first time Yagen’s seen the man take flight in battle, but it  _is_ the one time he heads for the holes in the sky. There lie the distortions created by gaps in the timeline, the doors from where their enemies descend.

"You can’t!"

He thinks he sees the silver-haired man look back, but just once. Then he’s gone into the darkness, leaving nothing but a single black feather that lands at Yagen’s feet. Seemingly seconds after that (in this time–who’s to say how much has passed in his?), the skies above him crack and splinter into points of light. The ground beneath Yagen gives way and he finds himself falling, falling, f

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“Yagen!”

Yagen Toushirou comes to his senses with a jolt, clipping his heels on the hard marble floors with enough force to echo in the grand entry hall.

"Huh?"

“Haha, did you fall asleep on your feet?” Before him, Fudou waves a hand in his face and skips back a few steps. “Come on, it’s almost time for the ceremony!”

"Ceremony?" Yagen echoes, glancing automatically towards Fudou’s other hand for the bottle of (?)– _what, exactly?_ –that isn’t there. "What ceremony?"

“You’ve been overworking again, haven’t you?” Fudou frowns at him with a face remarkably clear and sober. “Hasebe’s gonna be pissed if he finds out! Heh, I’m tellin’ him for sure!”

Yagen knits his brows together, narrows his eyes and thinks. He’s–he doesn’t know what, but he needs quiet and time to  _consider_. He needs to find–

"The General," he blurts out next. "Where are they? I need to see them."

“That’s where we’re going!” Fudou grabs his hand and drags him down the hall. Marble pillars line both sides, while stone statues of figures Yagen doesn’t know grace them from the ceilings. “Hurry up, we’re going to be late for Nobunaga-sama’s coronation!”

"What?"

“After midday, he’s going to be crowned Emperor of Japan!”

_What?_

Something about that echoes differently than what he remembers, but when Yagen looks back into his memories, he doesn’t find anything wrong. He’s served the man he calls his master for years, watching him build up him empire bit by bit. Allies and traitors alike had fallen before his swords until he was the only one left.

"Where are we?" he suddenly asks, because  _marble_ and  _granite_ and  _statues_ are not things he’s familiar with in either past or present.

“The Temple of the One-Winged Angel!” Fudou’s grip on him is firm, his steps quick but steady as he leads him towards the door at the end of the hall. “They finished building it right before Nobunaga-sama’s ascension date. He’s the strongest god in mythology, don’t you know? He defeated Izanagi with only a single strike!”

Yagen wants to ask more, but Fudou’s already led them past the door and into the room beyond. There is a sizable crowd of soldiers and nobles alike, each of them standing to wait around an empty raised dais in the center. Above in the front and center is a beautiful marble statue of a long-haired man with one wing over his shoulder.

“I wonder what he really looks like,” Fudou remarks. “The Angel guy. Probably all tall and majestic, with wings as white as a crane’s–”

"Black," Yagen replies immediately.

“Huh?”

"The wing is black."

“Really? You’ve seen him?”

Yagen wrinkles his brow again, grasping for tendrils of memory that isn’t there. "I…don’t know."

Fudou just crosses his arms and laughs. “If you’re going to make things up, at least be more convincing!”

But then he quiets down, because a group of priests have entered the hall and now they’re chanting a song.

> _Veni, veni, venias, Gloriosa_  
>  _Ne me mori facias Generosa_  
>  _Veni, veni, venias, Gloriosa_  
>  _Ne me mori facias Generosa_
> 
> _Sephiroth  
>  Sephiroth  
>  Sephiroth_

Yagen hardly blinks when Oda Nobunaga accepts the crown and takes his rightful place as royalty, but his eyes can’t help but see flickers of silver hair and green, cat-like eyes between the glimpses of his Gener—no,  _His Majesty_ now.

It’s strange, but he pushes the images to the back of his head. Souza tells him it might be visions, scattered sights of the Angel offering him enlightenment in his mind. He secretly finds the idea ridiculous and decides to ignore them. It wasn’t wise to trust anyoneso absolutely.

Just enough to let them in, and shut them out when all was over.

 

**Author's Note:**

> There were more plotlines planned like Sephiroth having a debate with Yamanbagiri on the nature of duplicates or hanging out with Hyuuga (Masamune) but in the interest of time I stopped. Maybe they'll show up as side-episodes one day... :)


End file.
